Salvo D’Avila learns the fundamentals of photographic technique at the Scuola Romana di Fotografia, where he met Mario Caponi – a notable fashion photographer – with whom he collaborates to this day on specific projects. The various genres in which he is active (business portrait, reportage, sport and entertainment, landscape and macro) benefit from the technique and creativity he nurtures in his studio, where he focuses as much as possible on his favourite genre: the still life

The latter does not have its beginning and end in the instant of the photographic shot. The process involves the veritable construction of images. First comes the creative vision, then the search for the objects and backdrops to turn it into reality, followed by the arrangement of these items and of the lighting. The final taking of the photographic shot is the least demanding of the steps in this sequence.

In still lives, the language of photography can engage with that of painting, in the search for aesthetics which attempt to overtake reality by means of the suggestive and ‘magical’ powers of the imagination (as per a comment by Paul Klee, National Gallery, Rome).

Rome provides an additional motive for engaging in such ‘pictorial’ photography. The former glories of the empire and of the Baroque, which drew Grand Tour visitors to it, clash with too many of today’s phenomena, noises, trends and presences. To quote the ‘idiot‘: ‘the world will be saved by Beauty.’